Who said it? Voices in news translation, from a semiotic perspective

In Translation studies, it has long been understood that when translation is integrated into journalism, concepts such as equivalence and authorship become highly problematic. However, there is still no reference to a general method that might explain why news production impacts the very process of translation and affects the translated texts themselves. In this paper, we introduce a new semiotic approach that measures shifts in translated texts by using semiotic modalities and relates these shifts to axiologies by actants of the practice of translation. Translated texts by an Italian weekly magazine are adopted as a case study and an analysis of the textual corpora is coupled with think-aloud protocols by editors. The semiotic approach reveals that the actantial dynamics are conflictual: while the translators’ performance is compatible with the equivalence value, journalists endorse values that result in the content of the original being altered. The divergence between the axiology of the actant initiating the practice and the axiology pursued by the translators affects the way the concept of translation is generated.